H. J. Stam,
Professor of Psychology,
Department of Psychology,
University of Calgary,
Calgary,
CANADA, T2N 1N4.
stam@acs.ucalgary.ca
and
James C. Mancuso,
Emeritus Professor of Psychology,
University at Albany,
Albany, New York,
USA, 12222
JCM61@cnsvax.albany.edu
Analysis and contrast of their epistemological/ontological foundations reveals strong commonality between Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) and social constructionism. Both contextualist positions share the assumption that signs take meaning only within the systems of signs within which that sign's production has occurred. Both approaches accept the task of analyzing the multitude of sign systems which underlie texts. Adherents of both positions express skepticism about traditional methods of validating claims about psychological functioning; holding that traditional science -- like any other scholarly endeavor -- has worked from preestablished epistemic values to make claims that stand, at best, as consensually validated social constructions.
Social constructionists diverge from PCP theorists in their degree of emphasis on the role of social processes in the development of the construct systems of individuals.
Having cogently criticized standard, modernist psychology's explanations of internally fixed essences, such as traits, basic motives, etc., social constructionists have developed a justifiable wariness of explanations of personalized construct systems. Thus, the social constructionists show a propensity to view (PCP) as a system which is tainted by a non-agentive cognitivism, from which the PCP adherents derive unacceptable individualistic formulations.
Finally, social constructionists, having excelled at deconstructing traditional psychological processes, show a reluctance to offer replacement explanations.
As a personal construct psychologist, I would hesitate to accept placement into the category social constructionist without resolutions that would acknowledge that (1) PCP and social constructionism share basic epistemological/ontological assumptions; (2) that (PCP) has developed useful formulations about the development and functioning of individual systems of signs; (3) that we can consensually establish methods for validating claims about psychological processes; and (4)that the behavior explaining claims of PCP can and have suitably set out formulations about the intertwining of individual systems and the social processes that occur in the context of action.
Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
(901) 678-4680
FAX (901) 678-2579
neimeyerra@msuvx1.memphis.edu
As constructivist and social constructionist metatheories have begun to reshape psychotherapeutic discourse and practice, proponents of more traditional perspectives have responded by challenging the legitimacy of a constructivist perspective and proposing several alternatives, ranging from "regressive realism" to Gibsonian "ecological" models. In particular, critics have raised concerns about (a) the "antirealism" of constructivist and narrative positions, (b) the disturbing implications of postmodern conceptions of the "self" and social relationships, and (c) the adequacy of constructivist models of therapeutic intervention. In this paper I try to respond to each of these criticisms, resisting the temptation to indulge in epistemological polemics while considering the advantages and disadvantages entailed by constructivism for the practice of therapy.
Kelly structured his theory of personal construct psychology in terms of a fundamental postulate elaborated by a number of corollaries. While the fundamental postulate must be accepted without question, the same does not hold for the corollaries which may be open to empirical verification. Yet there have been few such studies. Here we consider ways in which one of the corollaries, that of "commonality", may be tested.
The commonality corollary is often employed in the context of research situations where a large number of people have rated a common set of elements on a common repertoire of constructs. Conclusions drawn from such data depend on the commonality of construing, yet this assumption is not tested. Two approaches to testing for a common construct are considered here. They are the relatively familiar psychometric techniques of common factor analysis and latent trait modelling.
The data come from a study where a supplied grid was constructed to assess perception of recruitment advertisements. A sample of 175 insurance sales- persons rated each of 10 elements (advertisements) on each of 12 bipolar constructs (descriptors).
The latent trait modelling approach proceeded by considering the twelve constructs as scales, each "scale" being comprised of ten items (elements). The model was fitted using the conditional estimation program of Andrich (1982) which produces chi-square tests of fit. Results showed that none of the constructs met a strict statistical criterion for fit, although the chi- square values were also used here as a basis for comparing constructs. Two constructs were relatively well-fitting, while three constructs were relatively poor fits to the data.
These chi-square values were also broken down by element within each construct. This partitioning of the chi-square for each construct assisted in identifying elements which contributed to the lack of fit. Four elements were largely responsible for the poor fit of the constructs, and it was these elements about which the group failed to agree.
The commonality corollary could also be tested by fitting a one factor model to the person by element data for each construct. Using maximum likelihood, tests of fit for each construct's commonality could be obtained. Only two constructs could be fitted by a single factor according to probability values. The same caveats with respect to chi-square apply here. In the factor analytic context however, indices have been created to more accurately reflect the fit of the model. Such indices can be interpreted like reliability coefficients. The index used here showed moderate levels of fit, but variation between constructs.
Again we may consider the performance of individual elements in contributing to the misfit for each construct factor. Here the residuals from fitting a one factor model to each set of construct data were used. The average residual for all elements only reach an acceptable low figure (<.05) for two global evaluative constructs.
Thus it was concluded that either a one-factor analytic approach or a latent trait modelling approach can be used to test the commonality of constructs, although the two approaches did not give identical answers in the present study. It was found that the commonality corollary did not hold for all constructs. In both approaches however, diagnostic data were available to indicate for which elements the commonality assumption did not hold.
Eileen Donahoe and David Romney
University of Calgary
romney@acs.ucalgary.ca
Aims
The aims of this study were twofold: (1) to determine whether experienced
therapists construed clients in a more comprehensive and complex manner than
did inexperienced therapists and (2) to determine whether experienced
therapists discriminated more between (a) clients who were difficult to treat
and those who were easy to treat, and (b) clients and acqaintances, especially
in terms of constructs relating to anxiety. Such differences between
experienced and inexperienced therapists would help explain why the former are
generally more successful in their practice, particularly when it comes to
treating difficult cases.
Method
The therapists in this study were all either clinical or counselling
psychologists by training. Experienced therapists were defined as having had
more than six years of professional experience; inexperienced therapists, on
the other hand, were graduate students, predoctoral interns, or recent
graduates.
The therapists were asked to write two detailed descriptions, one of a client difficult to treat and another of a client who was easy to treat. These descriptions were assessed using a modified version of the Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ; Crockett, 1965). It was postulated that the experienced therapists, when compared with the inexperienced therapists, would (1) have a larger number of constucts, (2) use more abstract constructs, and (3) have a more highly organized construct system that would reconcile apparent inconsistencies within clients.
To determine if experienced therapists made a greater distinction than inexperienced therapists between clients and acquaintances as well as between clients easy to treat and difficult to treat, they were asked to complete a RepGrid in which they rated 12 elements representing a particular role position -- mother, father, closest female friend, closest male friend, a disappointing friend, a colleague, a client whose problems made him or her easy to treat, a client whose problems made him or her difficult to treat, a male client, a female client, a client whom you know well, and an ideal client -- on a minimum of 15 constructs, one of which (calm/anxious) was supplied as part of the investigation and the rest were elicited. The FOCUS computer program was used to analyze the results (Gaines & Shaw, 1980).
Finally, the therapists were required to make a clinical formulation of a case based upon a vignette of an intake interview with a fictitious female college student suffering from depression. In particular, they had to state one or two hypotheses about the causes of the client's problems, to justify these hypotheses, and to indicate what other items of information they felt they needed to know. It was expected that the experienced therapists would define the problem in a more complete fashion than the novices and that they would utilize more information, both personality traits and environmental influences, and explore more time frames (distant past, recent past, present).
Results
No significant differences were found between experienced and inexperienced
clients on the RCQ on any of the three measures -- number of constructs,
abstractness of constructs, and level of organization of constructs -- with
respect to either the difficult-to-treat client or the easy-to-treat client.
Clients and acquaintances were not construed differently by either experienced or inexperienced therapists, i.e., constructs used by therapists to describe clients (including those relating to anxiety) were also applicable to acquaintances (and vice versa) regardless of the level of experience of the therapist. However, therapists as a whole drew finer distinctions between clients than they did between acquaintances, implying that they saw clients as being more different from one another.
In formulating their hypotheses about the depressed client who was the subject of the vignette, the only significant differences to emerge were that experienced therapists made more mention of family relationships compared with inexperienced therapists who tended to refer more often to the client's moral values. But in terms of the total amount of information utilized or sought there were no significant differences between the two groups.
Conclusions
Contrary to expectations, there were virtually no significant differences
between the ways experienced and inexperienced therapists construed their
clients. The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that experience alone does
not promote a more "expert" way of looking at clients. Expertise cannot be
equated with experience. The way an expert, not merely experienced, therapist
views clients needs to be investigated as a separate study. Meanwhile, granted
the importance of analytic skills for case formulation, their acquisition by
means of "deliberate practice" and immediate feedback should play an important
role in continuing education. Because of the possibility, however, that the
therapist's ability to bond affectively, considered by many to be the essence
of a good therapist, grows with experience, there is a need to broaden the
scope of this research to outside the purely cognitive domain. The development
of affective bonding during therapy with both experienced and inexperienced
therapists is a likely area for future research.
Jerald Forster, University of Washington
counsel@u.washington.edu
The purpose of this paper is to present a case that constructivist assumptions and related practices will contribute to the survival of the human species.
The key ideas of this case are:
1. A constructivist perspective is based on the assumption that human realities
are constructed or created by people.
2. A constructivist perspective enhances human consciousness, which seems to
have been evolving since the development of written language.
3. The evolution of human consciousness is important for long-term survival of
the human species.
Elaborating on the first key idea, I will use Kelly's philosophical position of constructive alternativism to define the idea of a constructivist perspective. People operating with constructivist perspectives assume they are construing and they are aware of the interpretive process that is involved. They do not assume their interpretation can be judged to be valid should it correspond to "real" reality. They assume, instead, that they can not know a "real" reality in any kind of way that could be verified by objective methods. They assume they must use language and layers of metaphors to make sense of phenomena that might be within their range of perception.
The second key idea uses Julian Jaynes' concept of human consciousness, a process whereby a person creates a virtual reality built on awareness of self and time/space discriminations. Jaynes suggests that there are recognizable signs of evolving human consciousness since humans developed their written language over the past 4000 years. Since consciousness has evolved as humans became more aware of themselves and their actions, the recent developments in constructivism suggest increased awareness of how self and other personal realities are being constructed.
The third key idea connects the evolution of human consciousness to survival of the human species. This connection builds on the idea that survival will be enhanced by flexibility and better problem-solving abilities. Constructivism improves problem-solving because it helps people see or construe problems in different ways. Alternative perspectives, enhanced by highly evolved consciousness, allows people to consider new possibilities and solutions to problems.
The need for constructivist perspectives that facilitate alternative ways of seeing events or problem situations will be especially important in the next millennium. This is the case because there will be more people living on earth and technology will be developed in ways that increase interactions and exposure among those people. Instant communications, via electronic mediums, will allow or force people to interact with others in all parts of the world. New transportation modes will take people to all parts of the globe in short periods. People from cultures previously unknown to most people on earth will move about the world and interact with others who grew up in very different cultures with very different belief systems. It will be difficult to remain isolated and uncontaminated by people with other beliefs and cultural practices. We are approaching an era where all people will know about the existence and practices of people who construe in ways very different from themselves. During earlier eras it was a common practice to deal with people of different or conflicting beliefs by conquering them or killing them if they couldn't be conquered. Luckily, limited methods of transportation and communications prevented much interaction between people who were different from each other. During the next millennium the technology will permit mass destruction of other peoples and of the environment. If new ways of interacting with others do not evolve, people will be quite capable of destroying the cultures and environments needed to sustain life on the planet.
It is proposed that constructivism does offer a set of assumptions that can help people recognize their construing processes. This recognition can help them approach the future as a time of many possibilities. By assuming that they are creating their unique ways of making sense, they will be open to many possible realities. They will realize that realities are socially constructed and that shared realities must be negotiated with others. They will be aware that agreements must be based on shared realities that need to be negotiated. Diversity of perspectives will be taken for granted and not seen as a cause for using physical force. Society will be construed as many networks of negotiated rules and practices which must be accepted by cooperating parties if they are to survive on a planet with limited resources and fragile sustainability.
Brian Gaines
Knowledge Science Institute
University of Calgary
gaines@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
During the past 20 years personal construct theory and methodology has been made operational through the computerization of techniques for investigating individual and group construction. Computerization of repertory grid elicitation and analysis has allowed the construct systems applied to a particular domain to be elicited and analyzed rapidly and clearly. Computerization of concept map elicitation and analysis has allowed a similar approach to the superordination and subordination relations between constructs. PCP-based computer tools have been applied widely across many disciplines including clinical psycology, education, medicine and artificial intelligence. This presentation illustrates the tools in use on personal computers and demonstrates recent trends in which the tools have been made widely accessible through the World Wide Web.
Suzanne Huffman, University of Memphis
huffmans@msuvx1.memphis.edu
The purpose of this paper is to describe a research strategy which capitalizes on the safeguards against observer bias and other well established advantages of repertory grid methods. This strategy also employs the rich ideographic qualities of a narrative approach. The Critical Episodes strategy (a) is grounded in the holistic view of emotion advanced by Personal Construct Psychology, (b) uses as elements recollections of situated interpreted acts, (c) involves participants through a mutual orientation model of data collection (d) provides a structure for narrative analysis and its incorporation into grid analysis and (e) may be applicable in a variety of educational, organizational and counseling contexts.
The basic theory of PCP addresses a limited number of emotional labels for our construal of events. For instance, hostility arises from serial invalidation; anxiety, from inadequate structures to deal with events we anticipate confronting. Throughout the history of PCP, there has been little wavering from the essential, and still somewhat radical view of emotions: we do not have separate cognitive and affective lives. Instead, emotional responses are generally signals to us of constructs which are challenged or in transition. In recent years, constructivists have begun to examine emotion both in terms of (a) the self-evaluative labels which arise during childhood and (b) the way in which these signals function in ongoing adult development.
It has been suggested that an appropriate unit of measurement to examine emotional experience is the situated interpreted act. Stories are an appropriate means of accessing situated interpreted acts because they include the context of events and provide a vehicle for reflection on events. Furthermore, stories are a naturally occurring medium through which shared meanings are constructed and transmitted among a group.
The Critical Episodes strategy, therefore, utilizes written stories evoked through emotional/evaluative prompts. Participants write about events they associate with terms such as "moved or touched... anxious... success." They then write, on numbered cards, brief phrases to help them recall each event. These cards are used in the classic triadic sort construct elicitation procedure, and the events subsequently serve as elements in repertory grids. Analyses include examination of narrative structure and content, as well as multidimensional scaling of repertory grid data. The narrative analyses function as astrology, serving to clarify the personal myths embodied in the constellations of element and construct points.
To complete the mutual orientation model of data collection, participants are invited to confirm researcher reflections on their data. Participant confirmation provides assurances of validity, that the researcher has gleaned patterns which are already known and recognized on some level by those contributing the data. The confirmation session also serves as a learning conversation and provides additional data about participants' constructions.
In a study of teacher candidates, these methods served to examine the early field component of the formal training program. As participants considered their experiences observing and teaching in the schools, they began to form a more cohesive narrative of teaching self. During a group confirmation session, participants verified not only the major findings, but also the utility of the methods to structure reflection. Therefore, even before the learning conversation, the Critical Episodes methods functioned developmentally as well as empirically.
The approach described here is related to those which have been used in organizational and career counseling settings, and therefore appear appropriate for use in these contexts. The only adaptation required is specifying the universe of events from which the episodes are selected. For instance, one could use this strategy in exit interviews, asking employees to think of job-related events which they associated with the emotional/evaluative prompts.
Future possibilities for the methods include extending the strategy into a workshop format, perhaps over the course of several days. Participants could then be more involved in processing their episode data, examining for themselves the structural components and content of the stories. There are precedents in Personal Construct Psychology for persons working in groups to negotiate categorization schemes for individual construct pairs. Those who have employed this approach suggest that participants gain personal insight from articulating their constructs to others. The negotiation process also requires that participants be open to others' construal of their remembered experience. Additional options for using Critical Episodes might involve self-directed activities such as workbooks or interactive software, with participants meeting singly or in groups to carry out the learning conversation.
April Metzler and Donna Laughrin,
Lehigh University
aem3@lehigh.edu
This study tested the impact of an four week extended orientation program on international students adaptation to college and cultural attitudes. This orientation group was also compared to a group that received the traditional orientation week alone. The extended orientation program, known as "step-up," was designed for undergraduate and graduate international students in their first year of college in the United States. All incoming international students are given the opportunity to participate in "step-up." This four week program consists of daily classes which focus on writing, reading and speaking English. In addition, students are taught study skills, test taking strategies and time management techniques. Students can also attend programs that give practical information about the university, including instruction in using the library facilities and the computer lab, tours of campus, and help with fall semester registration. In addition, students have the opportunity to participate in discussion groups run by graduate students. These sessions are designed to focus on social and cultural issues important to international students including communication skills, understanding cultural differences, handling conflict resolution, and dating/making friends in the United States. The evenings and weekends are kept free so students can engage in social activities and get to know one another and the college community.
In this study, the experimental group consisted of thirty international students enrolled in Lehigh University's "step-up" program who volunteered to participate in completing three outcome measures. These students participated in the program itself, and were asked to fill out a demographic questionnaire, the Inventory of Student Adjustment Strain, a repertory grid designed to measure student's perceptions of various cultural groups and the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire. The control group consisted of first year international student volunteers who chose not to attend the "step-up" program. The control group was also asked to fill out a demographic questionnaire, the Inventory of Student Adjustment Strain, the repertory grid and the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire. In an attempt to determine the overall effectiveness of this extended orientation program, the outcome measures were collected before the program, after the program, and one semester following the program for the experimental subjects, and both before and after the first semester for control subjects. Based on data analysis, it is anticipated that students who participated in "step-up" will have better college adjustment and a broader understanding of different cultural groups after their first semester than those who did not. In addition, it is expected that data analysis will provide information on whether the "step-up" program is more effective in preparing some international students for college than others. Since the format of the program requires students to actively participate, it is expected that students who are willing to request help for their problems would be more likely to benefit from the "step-up" program than students who prefer to find the answers for themselves.
Finn Tschudi, University of Oslo
ftschudi@sv-mail.uio.no
The SCM method extensively discussed by Hermans & Herman-Jansen (1995) may formally be seen as a grid with elicited elements, or 'valuations' in the SCM terminology. A valuation may be any topic of emotional significanse; an episode, a dream, hopes or fears for the future etc. The set of valuations (20-40) elicited from a person is then rated on a set of affect terms, typically including Self- orientation, (pride, self-esteem etc.), Other-orientation, (love, care etc.) and terms denoting Positive, and Negative affects. Self- and Other-orientation are offered as operationalizations of Bakan's celebrated 'agency' and 'communion'.
Hermans identify a set of types of valuations which are (intuitively) arranged in a circle. Each type may be seen as exemplifying an existential postion, and the whole set calls to mind Leary's circle for 'interpersonal diagnosis', and various circumplex models. We show that Hermans' circular arrangement can be corrobarated by PCA analyses, thus strengthening Hermans notion of a 'latent' level underlying the 'manifest' data. Furthermore Hermans idea of degreas to which a valuation exemplify a type is given a strict numerical interpretation. Several illustrations of our methods for analyzing SCM data are given, among them results from violent men where also Tomkins script theory is also brought to bear.
Hermans, H. J. M. & Hermans-Jansen, E. (1995). Self-narratives. The constructions of meaning in psychotherapy. New York: Guilford
Christel A. Woodward, McMaster University
woodward@fhs.csu.McMaster.CA
In 1955, Kelly wrote that in his opinion, "the development of enactment techniques holds great promise in psychotherapy".(p.1155) Yet, in the more than 40 years since these words were written, the wide-spread development and use of enactment techniques in psychotherapy has not occurred. Particularly, the use of fixed role therapy is quite limited.
My research and teaching activities have intermittently involved working with standardized patients (SPs: people trained to portray a patient role in a consistent fashion). SPs play an important role in health professional education. They are employed both to assist in teaching physical examination and interviewing skills and in formal examinations of these skills. Although SPs would occasionally try to tell me about their experiences, only recently did I decide to listen carefully to their stories. Randomly-selected SPs were invited to attend focus groups which were audiotaped and transcribed. This paper examines what they told me about their experiences from the viewpoint of fixed role therapy and enactment procedures within the framework of Personal Construct Theory (PCT).
Unlike psychotherapy patients, SPs have not sought help for personal problems in living. SPs come in all ages, shapes and sizes. Recruited by word-of-mouth, they are usually friends, relatives and neighbours of Faculty and staff, along with some university staff and students. SPs' ages range from young children to very elderly individuals. The SP program at McMaster University, one of the oldest in North America, tries to select psychologically healthy individuals who enjoy the challenge of staying in role and improvising answers to questions from the points of view of the characters they are asked to play. Admittedly, not all answers are completely improvised. For each role, there is a set of facts about the person's illness or circumstances that SPs must consistently present when the health care professional (or student) asks the right types of questions or does to right type of examination.
SPs undergo several hours of formal training in their roles. Key aspects of their characterization that differ from they own experience are taught through enactment procedures. Although these aspects may be medical (from feigning a limp to a collapsed lung), there are often also psychological components to the patient's problem, be they adjustment to a chronic illness or the chronic illness of a loved one through to serious depression and disturbing thoughts or experiences such as being a rape victim. The training team usually includes someone who knew the actual patient on whom the SP role is built. The team helps the SPs explore their new roles much like therapists who use enactment procedures might. Kelly gave examples of several types of therapeutic enactments (see p.1150 and following) Kelly could have been watching a SP training session when he wrote this section of his book! Often trainer and SP exchange roles as the SP is taught the key features of a given role.
Kelly notes that sometimes client feel too uncomfortable with enactments to profit from them (p.1153), complaining that they feel "insincere" in this role. SPs are given the opportunity to decide whether or not they feel comfortable enough to play the roles that they are rehearsing. In our experience, the SPs usually accept the part they are asked to play, although they are given time (usually several days to a week to decide). Only occasionally does an SP suggest that (s)he does not feel right in the part proposed or asks to no longer portray a learn role. (Long-serving SPs may be trained to play 40+ parts.)
Possibly, the high acceptance rate observed in our SP program is the result of good matching of personalities to roles by the SP trainer who may, without being able to articulate it, ensure that the roles assigned are not completely outside the SPs range of convenience. (In her words "I think (s)he can do it".) The trainer reports that at times she has encouraged the SP to try the role and reminded him/her that this is "just a part" thus inviting suspension of judgement about the role. Kelly discusses the advantages of allowing the client to hide behind role playing when he is dealing with precarious issues. He notes that 'if the client feels that he is "being himself' rather than "acting a part" he is likely to feel threatened by any development in the enactment which appears to invalidate his core structures. If, on the other hand, the person thinks he is "only acting a part", he thereby disengages core structures from the enactment and may proceed to explore implications of his thinking more freely. He knows that he can always "return to being himself".'(p.1146)
During and after formal training, SPs report that they must learn to think like the person that they are portraying. They often makes notes to themselves during training about this individual and his/her life circumstances. They later read these over and imagine how this individual thinks and would react to situations. They describe rehearsing the role in their heads, thinking about possible scenarios and how they would respond as that person. Kelly also comments on this aspect of enactment. "Much of the enactment takes place on a non-verbal level"...... " Sometimes a client can get a great deal out of an enactment session, even though he seems utterly unable or unwilling to express himself. Just sitting there and feeling that he is cast in a certain part, or that he is perceived as being in a certain part, is in itself a form of adventure in which he is not likely to pass off lightly" p. 1147.
SPs do not like to be seen out of role by the person by whom they will interviewed or examined. This is particularly true when the contact involves an extensive interview (rather than pretending to have an acute physical problem like a collapsed lung) and SP role involves some emotional components. They report that they spend the last few minutes before the session assuming the non- verbal behaviour of the patient and "getting into role".
After SPs have played roles, especially roles with a large psychological component, they may use very deliberate strategies to help get them out of role and remind themselves that they are not the individual that they just portrayed. As any good PCTist should by now anticipate, SPs describe personal learning through their work. They learn about the health care profession, how students learn, how people reveal themselves through the questions that they pose. More importantly, they also learn about themselves, how they react in situation that they would otherwise never encounter which lead to change in their outlooks.
This paper will illustrate how taking on a role as an a SP, especially if when the assigned role is played many times, is very similar to fixed-role therapy and examine how personal change occurs for SPs using PCT.
All page references are from George Kelly (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Volume Two: Clinical Diagnosis and Psychotherapy. New York: WW Norton & Co. Inc..
A Symposium Led by Kenneth W. Sewell,
University of North Texas
sewellk@terrill.unt.edu
Many changes have occurred in views of how traumatic experience relates to subsequent psychopathology. In early psychoanalysis, neuroses were viewed as products of traumatic experiences; thus, the term traumatic neurosis was a redundancy. The view also emerged that post-trauma adjustment was characterological; that is, each person has a preexisting "breaking point." Then, later psychoanalytic thinking de-emphasized the event of trauma in favor of fantasies which reflected unconscious conflicts. Other views (classical psychiatry's focus on symptom diagnosis, behavior modification of symptoms, cognitive behavioral modification of current verbal representation) placed emphasis away from both the putative traumatic events and the characterologic predisposition. Then, with the Korean and Vietnam war eras came a renewed emphasis upon the traumatic event. This period solidified the current diagnostic construct of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which by definition involved a precipitating traumatic event, along with the subsequent symptoms and dysfunctional adjustment. Thus, historically, emphasis has varied from preexisting trait to traumatic event to subsequent symptoms and functioning. As constructivists, there is no compulsion to ascribe to any extreme pole of these dimensions, or even to the utility of the dimensions themselves. For this and many other reasons, personal construct theory has much to offer the study and treatment of trauma.
This symposium deals with trauma and its aftermath from the view of personal construct theory, with a decided focus on therapeutics. It will assume that a traumatic experience itself must be defined in terms of whether the individual possesses or lacks the constructs by which to construe the event--thereby determining whether it is "catastrophic." It will be shown experiences that are indeed catastrophic can create enduring changes (impairments) in selected aspects of conceptual structure, and that these aspects are assessable via repertory grid technology and other constructive probes. It will be assumed that a theoretical understanding of and intervention for post-traumatic functioning might best be approached through understanding the individual's personal construct system. First in the series, a constructivist model is reviewed along with supportive research in areas of combat survivors, mass murder witnesses, and women who have been sexually assaulted (Paper #1 by Sewell & Cromwell). Then, focus is turned to intervention, involving (a) "role constriction" with combat veterans (Paper #2 by Reid Klion), (b) the narrative treatment of bereavement (Paper #3 by Bob Neimeyer and Alan Stewart), (c) narrative reconstruction (Paper #4 by Judith Stewart), and (d) evaluations of interventions and new directions (Paper #5 by Sewell).
This paper outlines the concept of role constriction and how it may provide a means of conceptualizing the treatment of traumatized Vietnam-era combat veterans. Role constriction is described as an individual's enacting a very limited and circumscribed set of strategies and constructs in understanding the world. Some of the factors which lead to the development and maintenance of role constriction in these clients are reviewed as well as are some psychotherapeutic strategies which might be used to increase their ability to understand the world and themselves more comprehensively and effectively.
Although constructivism has generated much theoretical discussion in the mental health disciplines, its implications for clinical conceptualization, assessement, and treatment have been less systematically explored. In this presentation we attempt to rectify this imbalance by extending an account of post-traumatic stress and illustrating its applicability in the context of a case study. Specifically, we draw upon a variation of the repertory grid and other techniques to emplot the narrative of one traumatized client's life, and to promote his integration of the trauma experience. We conclude that a narrative perspective on the traumatic disruption of self-identity holds promise for clinical practitioners, as both heuristic and applied levels.
Studies investigating PTSD guided by a personal construct model will be briefly reviewed. The groups studied include Vietnam combat veterans, persons exposed to a mass murder incident, women who have experienced a sexual assault, and persons who grieving an important loss. The consistent and inconsistent findings across these studies will provide the basis for asking some basic questions about how constructivist research on PTSD can inform constructivist therapy with traumatized persons. The need will be argued for a therapeutic model of traumatization that incorporates a greater emphasis on change and adaptation.
How can one be helped to elaborate a traumatic experience (loss, etc.) such that the symptoms of PTSD resolve and the system is set for normal development rather than fragmentation? The current model is somewhat cross-sectional and, as such, cannot directly address the questions (particularly question 2). Thus, and given that PCT views the person as a form of motion, a more fluid conceptualization of the phenomenology described by the model is warranted. To aid in this reconceptualization, the concept of metaconstruction is invoked. ^struction comprises sociality when an individual construes another's construction processes. More importantly for the current purposes, metaconstruction comprises the sense of self when an individual construes her/his own construction processes at present in relation to a present construction of her/his own construction processes at various points in the past. Also an important part of the sense of self is the building of a future self--i.e., constructing/construing one's future construction processes on the basis of present construction of past and present processes (i.e., past and present metaconstruction). When past metaconstruction is seemingly discontinuous with present metaconstruction, predicting future metaconstruction from iteration to iteration seems mindboggling at worst, and not conducive to self-definition at best. In this way, any (particularly sudden) dramatic "change" (loss, role demand, horror experience, even a choice) can potentially be traumatic. The growth alternative, then, is elaboration of the present and past metaconstructions such that they are construed as continuously linked. Then, the future can be metaconstructed in a non fragmented, non-constricted fashion. Finally, several suggested elements of treatment will be discussed, including life review , trauma reliving, symptom management, future projection, constructive bridging, and intentional future metaconstruction.
This presentation will describe a narrative treatment of traumatization that revolves around developing a personally meaningful framework for the individual which allows processing of the past, understanding of present functioning, and predictability of future actions and reactions. This process necessitates development of a complex, multi-faceted or multi-voiced personal narrative. A set of heuristics are described for narrative reconstruction which have been useful in work with women veterans who have experienced military-related traumas of various types. However, this is not a presentation specifically aimed at dealing with the treatment of women veterans, but rather one which investigates the complexity of trauma and its aftermath when specific self-construals have collided within the experience of interpersonal trauma. A number of heuristics found useful in this work will be discussed and their clinical use illustrated via case material. These heuristics include such things as multiple levels analysis, metaphoric analogues, identification of self fragments and their imbalances and conflicts, identification of role-relationships and the disordered imposition of such in daily functioning, and the interpersonally generated integration of these in a generative life narrative. Techniques that have been found useful in this work, such as the experience cycle, pre- and post-treatment character sketches, the lifegrid, and the lifegraph (a visual representation of the material contained in the lifegrid) will be illustrated with examples from patient work. The presentation will conclude with a brief discussion of the genesis of the constructivist-based heuristics.
Bonnie Shapiro, Chair
726 EDT
The University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4
Telephone (403) 220-3844
Fax (403) 282-8479
bshapiro@acs.ucalgary.ca
Suzanne Huffman, University of Memphis
huffmans@msuvx1.memphis.edu
In the session, I will discuss the findings of a study which blended narrative methods and repertory grids to examine construal of early field experience. Participants in this study defined their teaching selves in terms of student response to their caring, which they contrasted with apathy and neglect they found among cooperating teachers and parents. They had little need to internalize the formal theory of their coursework; participants had been successful in telling themselves, their peers and a researcher plausible stories based in (a) their personal theories and (b) the folklore generated among and transmitted through the student cohort. Participants heartily endorsed the PCT approach as assisting them in construing a coherent narrative of their experiences. This presentation will include specific ideas for incorporating PCT into teacher education, with hopes that the discussion will generate additional suggestions for reflexive approaches.
Carolin Kreber
Instructional Development Office
Brock University
St. Catharines, Ontario
L2S 3A1
Tel: 905 688 5550 (#3933)
ckreber@dewey.ed.BrockU.CA
As an instructional development professional at Brock University I have a strong interest in faculty's conceptions about academic work. In particular, I am interested in finding out how well faculty integrate their three traditional roles (research, teaching, service), and whether this degree of integration may be higher for those professors who have demonstrated competence as both teachers and researchers. The study follows the assumption that faculty's approaches to teaching are related to how they conceptualize academic work as a whole.
New faculty (faculty who have only recently been admitted to the professoriate) and experienced faculty (faculty at the rank of full professor who are also recipients of a uiversity teaching award) from several Canadian research universities will complete a repertory grid. The elements (aspect of academic work) are supplied. Constructs will be elicited from respondents on the basis of twenty randomly selected triads. The grids will then be compared in terms of level of complexity and integration. The hypothesis is that experienced faculty show higher levels of complexity and integration than do their less experienced colleagues. The study is seen to have strong implications for faculty development in higher education.
Anita C. Leung,
Psychology Department,
University of Hong Kong.
anital@hkusua.hku.hk
Inclusion criteria for the program:
(1) parents experiencing a certain or considerable degree of frustration,
anxiety, or other transitional states in parenting;
(2) not currently severely disturbed, nor under citical crisis.
Objectives of the program:
(1) to facilitate parents to develop ROLE relationship with their children,
and
(2) to liberate their creaticity in problesolving through the C-P-C Cycle and
the Creativity Cycle.
Hypotheses :
If the program is effectively conducted, changes are expected in the following
areas:
(1) parents construe their children more positively;
(2) parents construe their parenting role more positively;
(3) parents become more creative problem-solvers in that they develop
alternative perspectives or new constructs, their construct system become
neither too tight nor too loose, and inconsistencies, if any, in their
construct system has decreased.
Indirectly, the following areas are also expected to be enhanced:
(1) parents' general functioning;
(2) parents' perceived self-efficacy;
(3) their children's general functioning.
Methodology:
The single group study is adopted to demonstrate the change process and its
impact on individuals within the group and beyond. A pilot group is followed by
a research group about 5-6 months later. Pre-and post-group measures, as well
as within group measures are taken qualitatively and quantitatively.
Bonnie Shapiro, University of Calgary
This paper builds on the view that the teacher preparation experience should be an occasion to articulate and value changes in one's development as a teachers. The approach and results of research to understand the meanings beginning teachers impose on the experience of learning to become a teacher, that is, their construal of the role of teacher is described. Personal construct changes were used engage students in discussions about changes in their ideas about what it means to teach. The chief purpose of the conversations was to focus on the teacher development program as an opportunity to articulate his or her own experience of change and growth. The focus on the primary importance of narrative in the teacher preparation program using changes in one's perspectives suggests a dramatic revision of the traditional teacher preparation program with a reconsideration of the roles of those who facilitate and guide student teachers' development.
Laura R. Winer and Jesus Vazquez-Abad
Dept. de didactique
Faculty of Education
Universite de Montreal
C.P. 6128
Succ. Centre-ville
Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7
phone: (514) 343-8069
fax: (514) 343-7286
WinerL@ere.UMontreal.ca
This paper will present the results from an application of Repertory Grid technique to the study of conceptions of four individuals representing different levels of content knowledge: a student taking the high school physics course, a first year university student in chemistry who had taken high school and pre-university level physics courses; a professor in science education with a B.Sc. in physics; and a doctoral student in physics. The subjects all felt that the constructs elicited and the subsequent relationship among the elements accurately represented their understanding of and concepts about the physical phenomena illustrated. The level of language used (as well as the language itself) varied, both between and within individuals; both technical and colloquial terms could be used with ease. Evidence of different conceptualizations (and of misconceptions) was obtained. Comparison of grids indicated possible ways of measuring conceptual change by analyzing the nature of the constructs elicited, their usefulness in discriminating between the elements, as well as the ways in which the different elements were rated.
Range of expertise
Research has shown that levels of content expertise in physics are evidenced by
qualitative as well as quantitative differences in an individual's
classification of and approach to solving problems. Students (i.e. low
content-level expertise) tend to classify problems according to surface rather
than deep features. For example, novices group inclined-plane and spring
problems into separate categories while experts group them by the laws of
physics needed to solve them (Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982). The appropriate
categorization of phenomena is important as misconceptions often stem from
miscategorization; for example, when heat, light, electrical current and forces
are categorized as matter or endowed with properties of material substances
(Chi, Slotta & de Leeuw, 1994). We expected evidence of content expertise
to be reflected in the constructs elicited from and their application to the
classification tasks presented to the subjects.
The progression from novice to expert implies conceptual change, which has been categorized as either weak (different relations among the same concepts) or strong (changes in individual core concepts themselves) restructuring (Carey, 1985). Assessing conceptual change remains difficult; Repertory Grid technique appears to offer new possibilities for facilitating this task. Although not looking at within subject change, we expected to see differences in the structure of the construct sets which would allow us to develop techniques for assessing conceptual change.
Assessing conceptions in physics using Repertory Grid Technique The feasibility of using the Repertory Grid Technique of Personal Construct Psychology (Kelly, 1955) for assessing student conceptions in physics has been demonstrated in previous work (Winer & V[[Omega]]zquez-Abad, 1995). This analysis focuses on analyzing grids produced by individuals with different levels of content expertise to identify indicators of differences between levels of understanding of physics content as well as determining how the grids can be used to provide researchers and teachers with indicators of students' understanding of common problem areas (e.g. difference between speed and acceleration; ability to see equivalence of systems).
The element sets consisted of drawings of different physical phenomena in sufficient context so that no verbal labels were necessary. Five sets of six drawings each were used; four of them grouped elements which dealt with similar phenomena (in the sense of involving the same main notions or concepts) and the fifth was a collection of drawings dealing with diverse motion phenomena. The first set dealt with Velocity, Acceleration and Inclines. This set is intended to present different cases of a body with a spherical shape ("a real particle") whose motion is affected mainly by gravity when moving on an incline, free- falling, or on a flat surface. The second set deals with Forces and Equilibrium. This set is intended to represent cases of bodies in equilibrium, whether hanging from hooks, springs, pulleys, or resting on a surface. The third set deals with Parabolic Motion. This set is intended to represent different cases of movements mainly affected by gravity when falling with or without a velocity perpendicular to the direction of gravity. The fourth set, Collisions and Momentum, represents different cases of transfer of momentum in a (presumably elastic) collision. Bodies looks like balls or pucks with the striking one attached to the ceiling by a string and the target either hanging by a string or resting on a surface. The fifth set was an Eclectic Set. It included some elements from other sets and one suggesting a free fall. It included an element suggesting an inelastic collision of a truck with a stack of hay as well as one usually intended to provoke a common misconception related to Newton's 3rd Law.
Grid analysis
RepGrid3 offers a number of different analysis possibilities, derived from
principal components analysis and cluster analysis techniques. The cluster
analysis procedure (called FOCUS) allows one to infer if two constructs, which
may or may not use similar terminology, are applied in a similar way to the
different elements. The grid comparisons also enable one to distinguish between
the same constructs which are simply applied differently and truly new
constructs, i.e. not just changes in the semantic labels. One can also compare
how the different elements are rated on the same constructs. This allows one to
see if and how elements are differentiated by the individual. Both within and
between subject comparisons are possible, assuming identical element sets. This
enables assessments of change over time, as well as the establishment of a
construct set shared among a given group, or, as in this case, the comparison
of construct sets and element grouping produced by people with different levels
of subject-matter expertise.
The grids produced by the four individuals have been analyzed both for what they tell us about each person's conceptual understanding of the physical phenomena (by a semantic analysis of each construct and an analysis of the coherence and consistency of the construct sets), as well as comparatively to distinguish between levels of understanding.
References
Carey, S. (1985) Conceptual Change in Childhood. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Centre for Person-Computer Studies. (1994) RepGrid3 Software and reference manual.
Chi, M. T-H., Glaser, R. and Rees, E. (1982) Expertise in problem solving. In R. Sternberg, ed., Advances in the Psychology of Human Intelligence, Vol. 1, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.
Chi, M. T-H., Slotta, J.D. and de Leeuw, N. (1994) From things to processes: A theory of conceptual change for learning science concepts. Learning and Instruction, 4(1), 27- 43.
Kelly, G. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Winer, L.R. and Vazquez-Abad, J. (1995) The Potential of Repertory Grid Technique in the assessment of conceptual change in physics. Paper presented to AERA, San Francisco, CA.